Carl W. Kenney II is an award winning columnist and novelist. He is committed to engaging readers into a meaningful discussion related to matters that impact faith and society. He grapples with pondering the impact faith has on public space while seeking to understand how public space both hinders and enhances the walk of faith.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Colin Powell most recent to slam North Carolina lawmakers

Hey North Carolina, It’s time for a reality check.

What are you thinking, the rest of the nation is
asking.Most fail to understand the
justification behind numerous actions.Why
is it all necessary? Why change things when nothing needed to be fixed?

Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired General Colin
Powell is the most recent person to offer state leaders an old fashioned spank
down. Speaking on Thursday at a gathering of top state business leaders in
Raleigh, Powell attacked legislators for radical changes in the states voting
system.

Powell said the state had a “fine system” before the
passage of the photo identification law signed by the governor.

Powell said he was speaking as a Republican. He said
the party is turning off a block of voters that they need, and the states who
forced voter restrictions witness an outpouring of black and Hispanic turn out
at the polls.

Powell isn’t the first from outside the state to blast
North Carolina’s Governor and state legislators.Bill Mahr challenged Jay Z to use his
considerable wealth to buy the state during the August 4 episode of Real Time.

Comedy Central’s comedian Stephen Colbert took stabs
at North Carolina during the July 30 episode of The Colbert Report. He discussed the General Assembly passing a
bill that removes the requirement that charter school teachers have a college
degree.

“Great move,” Colbert says. “Who better to teach fifth
grade than a sixth grader? It’s still fresh in his mind!”

Colbert even discussed
the state’s barbeque sauce.

“Who makes barbecue sauce with vinegar?” Colbert says.
“That’s what you use to clean a toilet, and when I say toilet, I mean
Charlotte.”

Feeding on the ridiculous,
Colbert mentioned a bill that would make it a felony to expose one’s nipple for
the purposes of arousal.

“So, North
Carolina strippers: be sure to wear a sign on your chest that reads, ‘For Educational
Purposes Only,’” he says.

Colbert’s
called those bills foreplay in comparison to a bill allowing those with
concealed guns to bring them into bars and onto playgrounds.

“Guns will make
the whole playground experience much more fun,” Colbert says. “Instead of
‘duck, duck, goose,’ you can just play ‘duck, duck, duck!’”

North Carolina’s General Assembly and Governor have
become common fodder in the New York Times. The editorial board at the Times
wrote The Decline of North Carolina on
July 9.The editorial criticized state
leaders on a wide-range of decisions.

“Republicans repealed the Racial Justice Act, a 2009
law that was the first in the country to give death-row inmates a chance to
prove they were victims of discrimination,” the editorial states.“They have refused to expand Medicaid and
want to cut income taxes for the rich while raising sales taxes on everyone
else. The Senate passed a bill that would close most of the state’s abortion
clinics.”

On August 18, Albert R. Hunt’s A Sharp Turn to the Right in North Carolina was published in the
New York Times.Hunts perspective was
presented as the Bloomberg View.

“For more than half a century, North Carolina has been
progressive on education and public investments, and pro-business — witness the
celebrated Research Triangle between Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill and the
financial center in Charlotte — with less racial strife than other Southern
states,” Hunt began.

“As Republicans took full control of the state
government in Raleigh, there has been a shift to the right. Taxes for the
wealthy have been slashed, and spending for education and programs that benefit
the poor has been cut. Abortion has been restricted, and guns rights expanded,”
Hunt says.

“We’re turning back everything that made us different
from other Southern states,” Hunt quotes Jim Goodmon, the chairman of CBC New
Media Group and owner of the Durham Bulls Minor League baseball team. “With
this shift, economic development is broken.”

Hunt cites other North Carolina business leaders
regarding the state’s radical shift.

“Ronnie Bryant, the chief executive of the Charlotte
Regional Partnership, the area’s top economic development recruiter, recently
complained to The Charlotte Observer that all the efforts of recent years to
promote Charlotte as a business center ‘have been negated in the last few weeks’,”
Hunt says.

Everyone seems to agree that North Carolina is headed
in the wrong direction.Despite the
massive attention that has the nation believing the state wants to resurrect Mayberry,
the Governor and those legislators are too bullheaded to shout uncle.

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Carl W. Kenney II

Carl was named the best serious columnist of 2011 by the North Carolina Press Association for his work with the News & Observer's community paper The Durham News and in 2016 by the Missouri Press Association for his columns in the Columbia Missourian. He is a columnist with the News & Observer and Co-Executive Producer of "God of the Oppressed" an upcoming documentary film on black liberation theology. He is a former Adjunct Professor at the University of Missouri - School of Journalism and Adjunct Instructor at Duke University, the Center for Documentary Studies. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He furthered his education at Duke University and attained a Master of Divinity. He was named a Fellow in Pastoral Leadership Development at the Princeton Theological Seminary on May 14, 2005. He is a freelance writer with his commentary appearing in The Washington Post, Religious News Services,The Independent Weekly and The Durham Herald-Sun. Carl is the author of two novels: “Preacha’ Man” and the sequel “Backslide”.
He has led congregations in Missouri and North Carolina